It is true the priests deny that unbelievers ever reason correctly, and pretend they must always be in the wrong to prefer natural sense to their authority. But in this decision they occupy the place of both judges and parties, and the verdict should be rendered by disinterested persons. In the mean time the priests themselves seem to doubt the soundness of their own allegations; they call the secular arm to the aid of their arguments; they marshal on their side fines, imprisonment, confiscation of goods, boring and branding, with hot irons, and death at the stake, at this time in France, and in other and in most countries of Christendom; they use the scourge to drive men into paradise; they enlighten men by the blaze of the fagot; they inculcate faith by furious and bloody strokes of the sword; and they have the baseness to stand in dread of men who cannot announce themselves or openly promulgate their opinions without running the risk of punishment, and even death. This conduct does not manifest that the priests are strongly persuaded of the power of their arguments. If our clerical theologians acted in good faith, would they not rejoice to open a free course to thorough discussion? Would they not be gratified to allow doubters to propose difficulties, the solution of which, if Christianity is so plain and clear, would serve to render it more firm and solid? They find it answers their ends better to use their adversaries as the Mexicans do their slaves, whom they shackle before attacking, and then kill for daring to defend themselves.
It is very probable unbelievers may be found whose conduct is blamable, and this is because they in this respect follow the same line of reasoning as the devotee. The most fanatical partisans of religion are forced to confess that among their adherents a small number of the elect only are rendered virtuous. By what right, then, do they exact that incredulity, which pretends to nothing supernatural, should produce effects which, according to their own admissions, their pretended divine religion fails to accomplish? If all believers were invariably good men, the cause of religion would be provided with an adamantine bulwark, and especially if unbelievers were persons without morality or virtue. But whatever the priests may aver, the unbelievers are more virtuous than the devotees. A happy temperament, a judicious education, the desire of living a peaceable life, the dislike to attract hatred or blame, and the habit of fulfilling the moral duties, always furnish motives to abstain from vice and to practise virtue more powerful and more true than those presented by religion. Besides, the incredulous person has not an infinity of resources which Christianity bestows upon its superstitious followers. The Christian can at any time expiate his crimes by confession and penance, and can thus reconcile himself with God, and give repose to his conscience; the unbeliever, on the other hand, who has perpetrated a wrong, can reconcile himself neither with society, which he has outraged, nor with himself, whom he is compelled to hate. If he expects no reward in another life, he has no interest but to merit the homage that in all enlightened countries is rendered to virtue, to probity, and to a conduct constantly honest; he has no inducement but to avoid the penalties and the disdain that society decrees against those who trouble its well-being, and who refuse to contribute to its welfare.